AACPS OIT Byte

As educators, we seek meaningful ways to conclude the school year, allowing students to reflect on their learning journey and growth. Digital reflection projects not only offer a dynamic and engaging avenue for students to showcase their progress and insights but also serve as a platform for teaching and highlighting students' valuable digital skills. These projects not only foster critical thinking and self-awareness but also empower students to curate their educational experiences in a creative manner. Let's explore how these three digital reflection projects can serve as a captivating conclusion to the academic year. Personal Learning Portfolios: Encourage students to create digital portfolios displaying their best works, projects, and reflections from the entire school year. Platforms like Google Sites , Microsoft OneNote , and Wixie portfolios allow students to curate multimedia-rich portfolios incorporating text, images, videos, and audio recordings. This comprehensive ...

  By: Koralina McKenna, OIT Academic Specialist Around this time of year I was always looking for something new and versatile to capture my students interest. I wanted something that I could use from simple things like one-pagers and then use later for their final projects. Which brings me to my absolute favorite tool on the OIT roster - Adobe Express! Whether you're having students create an infographic, one-pager, thinking map, video or presentation - Adobe Express has you covered. It’s simple and easy to use for any grade level, individual or in groups; it doesn’t matter if you start from a template or scratch what your students create will be polished and professional. Students will find exactly what they need from a robust image, video and audio libraries built right into the editor. Perhaps what is most conducive to building student capacity with Adobe Express is that the editor stays the same regardless of the type of project they create. Students can download their projects...

By Morgan Thompson, LMS Teacher Specialist Looking to use Brightspace in a new way next year? Keep reading for some inspiration from your fellow #AACPSAwesome teachers! This year, a Brightspace user Roundtable Discussion was included as a session option during our semi-annual eCoach Day on March 7 th, 2024. Teachers from elementary, middle, and high school shared their experiences of how they are using Brightspace to enhance personalized learning, establish effective routines, and facilitate improved communication. 🔷Meet the Panelists Jeremy Milligan Northeast High School Amanda Scheeler Riviera Beach Elementary School Alex Tougas Annapolis Middle School Michael Vigna Broadneck High School 🔷Engagement through Personalized Learning Paths Whether it's providing student choice or embedding multimedia content, Brightspace offers versatile tools to accommodate diverse learning styles and abilities.  Jeremy, a science teacher, introduced the concept of using Brightspace's Game Map...

Meet Paige Richardson! Q: Tell us about your role in AACPS. A; My official title with AACPS is Instructional Technology Tech Support, but I deal directly with the MOI (Materials of Instruction) process and everything behind the scenes.  Q: Can you give us a behind-the-scenes look at what happens when coordinators find a textbook, website, software, product, etc. they want to use? What's the process? A: If a Coordinator would like to utilize a material for instruction, they must first check the Taimms (Textbook and Instructional Materials) catalog to see if it has already been approved or not. Once they have done that and determined it hasn't gone through the process, they must go to the Brightspace course and complete the request form. Once it has been determined that it can move forward, they must enter a request for evaluation in Taimms. If it is a digital material, AACPS requires technology documents to be completed before being brought to the committee for review.  Q:Can ...

  By Kerri Lambert, Teacher Specialist, AACPS Office of Instructional Technology This is the seventh and final post in a series about the Maryland Digital Learning Standards.  Collaboration, the third of the famous 4 C’s of the 21st Century is a natural fit for the Maryland Digital Learning Standards as technology allows for a variety of collaborative activities. Whether it’s working simultaneously in a document to meeting virtually with an expert or community member, technology allows individuals to work as a team to expand their knowledge base and find solutions. So what exactly does the standard say about this all important concept?  7. Global Collaborator  Students use digital tools to broaden their perspectives and enrich their learning by collaborating with others and working effectively in teams locally and globally. Students:  a) use digital tools to connect with learners from a variety of backgrounds and cultures, engaging with them in ways that broaden...

By: Darren Towers Educators are constantly seeking efficient tools that streamline their workflow while enhancing student learning experiences. Among the arsenal of resources available in Brightspace, one new tool that has garnered particular favor among educators is the Quiz Converter tool. At its core, the Quiz Converter tool simplifies the process of importing quizzes from various formats into Brightspace, thereby saving educators significant time and effort. Whether the quiz is in a Word document, Excel spreadsheet, or another LMS format, the Quiz Converter seamlessly translates it into a compatible format within Brightspace, preserving question structure, options, and scoring mechanisms. In today's diverse educational landscape, where resources come from various sources and formats, the ability to convert quizzes effortlessly ensures that valuable content is not lost in translation. This versatility empowers educators to curate quizzes from a wide array of sources, including t...

by Tracey Brown Instructional Technology Teacher Specialist      If you’ve spent any time around OIT lately, you have probably heard Tracey say it, there is no single bigger bang for your engagement buck than Minecraft Education in the classroom. Educators today can struggle to connect with students, inside and outside of the classroom. Smiles and greetings in the morning are met with a muffled grunt from inside of an oversized hoodie that presumably contains a student. If this is your reality then Minecraft can be the tool that wakes your students up and gets them actively engaging with you and each other, even if only for the duration of the lesson or project that utilizes the app. What Can My Students Do with Minecraft in the Classroom?      Minecraft Education can teach or reinforce content through worlds built by Minecraft experts and provided for educators and students from right inside of the app’s Library, but that isn’t usually where we suggest th...